Silicon Valley Redneck

Quick update

The hen that seemed to be doing well died not long after the last update.

We still don't have a real diagnosis for Huckleberry - his tests kept coming back either negative or ambiguous - but he got a big prednisone shot last week and now he seems to be doing much better.

Last Wednesday and Thursday: abundant rain.  Something close to 7" in two days.  Runoff!  The pond is noticeably higher!  Yay!

Last Friday: tail end of the hurricane.  Fair bit of wind, from random directions.  Some additional rain.  No big deal.

Meanwhile, within 20 miles eastward, there was a lot of storm damage.  And over yonder, in the mountains of North Carolina?  Vast destruction.

Friday, and over the weekend, there was enough runoff coming down the rivers to do a lot of damage in areas not particularly hit by the storm itself.  Douglas Dam was dumping water to avoid bigger problems, leading to evacuations along the French Broad River (one within a mile of here) and significant damage in some places.

We're 40 feet above road level, so safe against and plausible flood... but had the hurricane come that little bit west of where it actually went?  Some of the nearby neighbors might have had serious flood damage.

Anyway, that's how things are at the moment.  Much busy.  Abundant duck eggs.  Mad scramble to get various things done, with new things always cropping up.

Critter update

The ailing hen has made a full recovery, and is back to running around with the flock.

I've started leaving the gate of the pen open for a few hours a day, so the chickens can run around on the lawn.  (The duck pens are still mostly grassy; ducks seem to be less destructive of lawns, though they do make holes anywhere the ground gets muddy.)

Huckleberry seems to be doing somewhat better, between changed food and some meds we've tried.  He just had a followup ultrasound and a biopsy to try to determine whether he has small-cell lymphoma or just IBD (waiting on lab results).  Now we're supposed to start him on an anti-inflammatory treatment regardless.

Life remains busy, and there are so many distractions these days!

The months go zipping by

Seldom a normal day.

We still don't know what's wrong with Huckleberry, though a weekly injection of vitamin B-12 seems to help.  It sure appears that some sort of pathogen ought to be behind the slow-moving outbreak of cat illnesses that started last Spring, but all the tests (including some very expensive ones) are coming up negative.

And this afternoon another of the chickens suddenly came down very sick; we're thinking she's probably eggbound, though going from apparently normal to collapse in 5 hours seems awfully rapid.  Joy has been trying home treatments for egg binding, with no success (and hasn't even been able to confirm the presence of an egg).  By the time I noticed that she was in distress, it was already too late in the day for a trip to the regular vet, and taking a chicken to an all-night emergency vet (especially when I'm in no shape to be driving, given the late hour) doesn't seem like something we're doing.

Politics is ever a distraction this summer, and then there's the global outbreak of rabid antisemitism - I'm not sure how much of that is real and how much is rent-a-mobs and bots, but it's certainly worrisome.

Work is back, so I'm bashing on FPGA stuff, and interface stuff, and need to find time and focus to do some heavy pondering and documentation on firmware reliability/testability and distribution issues.

Oh, yes: multiple FedEx packages from my Labor Day shopping were initially shown as arriving yesterday and today; one of the yesterday packages arrived today, and it looks like everything else is coming tomorrow.  Maybe.  FedEx's tracking has been kinda optimistic today.

And now it's definitely past my bedtime.

Update, Friday evening:  The ailing hen laid an egg this morning... an unusually large turtle egg.  Lack of a shell might explain why Joy couldn't feel an egg, though I'm not sure how a squishy egg like that gets stuck.  We have a suspicion there's another on the way.  Anyway, she's doing better now, eating and drinking and walking a little.  I added some calcium citrate to the main waterer, so they'll all get yet another calcium supplement.